07 September, 2007

I'm in the Ulster Room of the Burlington Hotel at the Environment Ireland® 2007 Conference. 'Towards 2020: The Environment in Ireland's Future'. Let’s not mention the lack of bicycle parking… Dave Fadden, a civil servant at the Department of Transport is speaking at the 'Towards a Sustainable Transport Future Workshop'. He tells a story. His brother-in-law has a garage. Last week a fellah came back with a 4.5 litre Range rover to the workshop; too embarrassed to drive it any more. Well that's some progress, but for the most part, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The Transport 21 white paper didn't mention cycling & walking in detail. He said the trend is not sustainable and that political leadership is required. Traffic congestion is going to get worse. Some kind of a champion at a political level is required, with the Green Party in government there’s quite a momentum. It's early days, but he's confident Noel Dempsey will rise to the challenge. .. He said it galls him that cycling is at 2% in Dublin, but in Copenhagen it's 33%.

Henk van der Kamp, head of the school of spatial planning at DIT made a pertinent comment about by-passes: why don't they institute traffic calming and car-free areas at the same time as building by-passes? As he pointed out, if you don't integrate transport and land-use you can forget about it. He lists the studies over the last forty years - Myles Wright 1967; Dublin Transportation Study 1971; Eastern Region Development Guidelines 1988; Dublin Transportation Initiative 1994; Strategic Planning Guidelines 1997; Platform for Change 2001;Regional Planning Guidelines 2004; Transport 21 -2005. Some looked at transport, some at land-use but never the two together. I sat on a DTI panel back in the early 90’s and I do remember Peter Ryan from Consultants Steer Davies Gleeve talking about this, but it just didn’t happen. One thing is certain, there has to be a meeting of minds between the Department of Transport and the Department of the Environment to put us on a sustainable course.

Henk emphasised that spatial planning policies need to be in place prior to the provision of infrastructure. Land use and transport planning policies have to be integrated. Henk ended on a poignant note. Its twenty years since An Foras Fórbatha was abolished. Maybe it’s time for a new environmental research agency to guide us through the twenty-first century.

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About Me

Born in Shankill, County Dublin, as the snow melted after the long hard winter of 1963. I trained an an architect and planner and studied at the University of Maine in the USA, University College Dublin, and the University of Venice.
I was a Green Party TD for Dún Laoghaire from 2002-2011. In the Dáil as Minister of State for Planning, I reformed our laws to put the needs of communities ahead of developers. I published laws to tackle climate change and noise pollution, and protect our heritage. I have stood up to high-rise development and corrupt rezoning. I am a keen gardener and sailor, and have two children. I am a Councillor representing Dublin's North Inner City
I lecture in urban regeneration in the School of Transport Engineering, Environment and Planning
at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street.